P.S.
If scripting tools are so wonderful, why do I need so many of them? Ruby, Python, Perl, Javascript, VBscript... Then there's the MS .Net - GAWD!

There is no "one size fits all" scripting language, and there arguably can't be. Each language was developed by different people to address a different set of problems.

Perl was originally written by Larry Wall to perform sophisticated manipulations on text files in Unix. It combines the functionality of several existing tools, including awk, sed, and tr, and quickly became popular with system administrators and others that did a lot of text manipulation. Unix and things like it (Linux, *BSD) use lots of text files to specify the configuration, and utilities that can modify these files with a script rather than manually are a boon.

Javascript is also known as ECMAscript, was originally written by Brendan Eich for Netscape Navigator 3, and originally called LiveScript. Calling it Javascript was an unfortunate Netscape marketing decision which has caused no end of confusion ever since, because people don't realize that Java and Javascript are two completely different things whose only similarity is having Java in the name. Every browser implements JAvascript these days, so if you use a browser, you have it.

Python is a script language created by Guido van Rossum, intended for general programming tasks. While you can manipulate text with it, that's not all it does. One example of stuff written in Python which is relevant here is the parser for Plucker Desktop, that converts HTML files to the form used by Plucker on PDAs.

Ruby is a script language created by a Japanese programmer, designed to address what he saw as lacks in Python.

There are more: if you use Unix/Linux/BSD, there are the script languages implemented by the Bourne, Korn, C, and Bash shells. (The Korn shell language is an upward compatible superset of the bourne shell, the C shell implements a script language with a C like syntax, and the Bash shell attempts to implement the best features of both.) There is also John Ousterhout's TclTk, and from the IBM mainframe environment but ported to other platforms, Michael Colishaw's REXX language.

MS .NET isn't a script language at all -- it's a programming framework implemented as a set of libraries, ala Visual BASIC back when.

For that matter, PCs have had a scripting language since the MS-DOS days: COMMAND.COM implemented a rudimentary script facility used in "batch" files, which has been extended under CMD.EXE in recent Windows versions.

You don't need all of them -- only the ones required by things you do.
______Dennis